Shelley Fralic: In praise of raw beauty

Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun01.22.2014

Raw Beauty Talks founder Erin Treloar. Last week, Treloar launched a website called Raw Beauty Talks, in which she posts photographs of women in all their bare-faced glory: untouched, unfiltered and without a stitch of makeup on.Murray Ash
/ Handout

The Rush host Fiona Forbes, photographed for Raw Beauty Talks. “I’m not the kind of person that has to be done up, but after the photos were taken, I realized I was nervous. I felt vulnerable."Karolina Turek
/ Karolina Turek

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In case you hadn’t noticed, aging gracefully is in. Or put another way, a woman whose face is unsullied by heavy makeup and cosmetic enhancements might well be the new “it” girl.

Oh sure, the young and unblemished still rule the pop culture roost, from runways to reality shows, but those of us with ravaged faces, to quote folksinger Janis Ian, may finally be having that day in the sun.

Witness the spectacular scene-stealing of dowager actresses Maggie Smith and Shirley MacLaine in Downton Abbey. Check out the fine-lined grace of Meryl Streep in August: Osage County. Google the photograph of Dame Helen Mirren in the red bikini. Remember that Smash wouldn’t have been one without the lived-in luminosity of Anjelica Huston.

Even some of the pretty young things are getting in on the act: Gwyneth Paltrow recently swore off Botox after one dalliance with the face-plumping toxin. Celebutante Kim Kardashian, known for her dark Armenian beauty and love of couture and cosmetics, often greets paparazzi without benefit of cosmetic artifice.

Vancouver’s Erin Treloar has another description for it: raw beauty, and she is not only embracing it in a big way personally but is urging other women to follow suit.

Her enthusiasm for sloughing off the trappings of a culture that worships beauty at all costs, and defines the same with its exultation and media overload of impossibly thin supermodels and spectacularly nubile starlets, comes out of the lessons she learned while battling an eating disorder in her late teens.

Treloar, who is 29 and today co-owns a West Broadway Pilates studio that specializes in rehabilitation, has faced, and survived, the emotional and physical turmoil that too often stares back at young girls who look in the mirror and don’t like what they see.

Whether they were raised with the notion that Barbie represents the ideal woman or whether, like Treloar, their own mothers are the kind who are beautiful without benefit of makeup, survivors of anorexia tend to have a unique perspective on the definition of beauty.

So, last week, Treloar launched a website called Raw Beauty Talks, in which she posts photographs of women in all their bare-faced glory: untouched, unfiltered and without a stitch of makeup on.

“Despite the strides I’ve made, sometimes today’s world can make it tough for a girl to really love herself,” Treloar writes on the site, noting that her anorexia was so serious that she was hospitalized between Grades 11 and 12, but now counts herself fully recovered.

“Modern day technology allows society to create images of women who aren’t even real through photo editing and enhancements. Social media platforms allow us to put forth our best side to the world, which is fine until we all start comparing ourselves to the perceived perfection we see on Facebook. There’s a quote that describes it — ‘You are comparing your behind-the-scenes to everyone’s highlight reel.’”

The minute Raw Beauty Talks site hit the web, people started taking notice, not only sending kudos for the idea but offering to pose sans makeup.

“At my core I don’t believe it’s right to have these feelings of self doubt,” Treloar said in an interview after the launch, “and I wanted a platform to talk about it.”

Of the 80 photographs she has stockpiled of friends, notables (such as Jaycelyn Brown of Said The Whale) and other volunteers — all shot by professional photographers — there are 16 now on the site and plans to unveil several more every week.

One of the subjects posted is Fiona Forbes, the host of Shaw television’s The Rush, a regular on Vancouver’s fundraising and social scene and thus a woman used to wearing makeup as part of her public persona.

When approached to participate, Forbes said she jumped at the chance but was surprised by her experience.

“I’m not the kind of person that has to be done up, but after the photos were taken, I realized I was nervous. I felt vulnerable.”Part of that, Forbes said, has to do with the interview that Treloar conducts and posts with the picture, essentially a series of questions that prompted some soul-searching and “made me feel so raw, made me reassess why (makeup) is so important.”

Treloar’s goal with Raw Beauty Talks is ultimately one of education, and she is working on seminars to address issues of “confidence, beauty and self-love.

“One of my main goals is to make people stop and think about all the different things that are putting pressure on women, and to have conversations about these things.

“I know first-hand that trying to find confidence and happiness through external beauty is a surefire way to end up very, very unhappy.”

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Shelley Fralic: In praise of raw beauty

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